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Private foster care providers have refused to take in at least 372
abused or neglected children so far this year, forcing most to sleep in
Texas Child Protective Services offices for a night or more, the Houston
Chronicle has learned.

Last month, the number of children who had to sleep in offices because
an appropriate foster care bed could not be found totaled 148, a sharp
rise from 32 youths in January.

State officials said earlier this year that most of the office-bunking
children had severe emotional or medical problems, making them the
toughest to place in an already crowded 34,000-bed foster care network.
In the past five years, the number of foster children increased 43
percent while the number of foster care beds grew by 28 percent.

But in May, CPS acknowledged that another factor was involved: Private
organizations that care for 80 percent of Texas' foster care children
can refuse to provide a bed for a child for any reason.

"In every case of a child spending the night in an office, a provider
with space for that child has refused the placement," said Patrick
Crimmins, spokesman for CPS' parent agency, the Texas Department of
Family and Protective Services.

That right-of-refusal provision is at the center of a struggle between
DFPS and providers that has pushed an overtaxed system past its limits
and exposed how providers have the final say as to whom they will care for.

"The system is maxed," Crimmins said. "The system as designed, depending
on your point of view, either cannot or will not absorb more children."

Providers such as Lutheran Social Services counter that they're having
to refuse more children to protect their own operations because state
caseworkers sometimes underplay a child's behavior history, resulting in
a child being placed in the wrong setting. Private agencies contend they
need that right of refusal to keep everyone safe.

''Some of the referrals are not appropriate," said Charlene Hoobler,
senior vice president of child and family services for Lutheran Social
Services. "We're not in the business of turning away children, but we
need to manage our risk."

Family and Protective Services officials argue that the agency does its
best to evaluate the child's level of care.

"We honestly describe the characteristics of each child, including any
emotional, behavioral or medical needs, when seeking a placement.
However, describing a child is not the same as experiencing that child
as a caregiver," Crimmins said.

Some of these tougher-to-place children, providers say, are so difficult
they could jeopardize the foster care operation's licensing if they hurt
someone or themselves. So providers say they must pay closer attention
to the child's past behavior for both safety and cost reasons.

If a severely disturbed child already has been through a provider's
foster care program once, some providers think there is no point in
accepting the child again.

"Providers we are contacting are not accepting some children with
special needs, even though they are licensed to do so and are already
caring for other children with special needs," Crimmins said.

But providers say their right of refusal is about the only flexibility
they have to prevent foster care children from being placed in a
residential facility or foster home ill-equipped to handle them.

A continuing problem
In a 2004 study on foster care by then-Comptroller Carole Keeton
Strayhorn, she determined the lack of such a no-rejection policy
undercuts the state's ability to manage an effective program. Some
states do have a no-rejection policy.

"Allowing providers to pick and choose among foster children and the
services they deliver undermines the entire foster care system,"
Strayhorn's report found. ''It also puts caseworkers in a bind when
contractors can dictate which children they will serve."

Lawmakers who worked to pass a foster care overhaul this session are
alarmed by the rising number of children staying overnight in offices,
no matter what the reason is.

"Having 148 children sleep in offices is unacceptable," said House Human
Services Chairman Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs. But Rose does not
support a blanket no-rejection policy.

"I do think it's important for us to build our capacity, to require
child-placing agencies licensed by the state to accept children on short
notice and in critical situations, and to arm our state employees with
every ability possible to take care of those children during emergency
situations," he said.

State Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, tried this session to put a
no-rejection policy in place, but it failed to pass.

''We're letting them (providers) dictate the rules, and that's what is
creating this problem," Uresti said.

The other factors
Another issue for providers is flexibility in the number of children
they take in.

Until recently, it was easier for providers to ask for a little leeway
regarding caseloads. They could take on children they may not have been
equipped to handle, at least on an emergency basis, because they could
request a rules variance from the state to do so.

"Before, I could act in the best interest of a child and know (Texas
child care) licensing would grant me a variance," Hoobler said.

As of this year, those variances are harder to come by as the state
began holding agencies and the homes they manage to tougher standards
that will officially take effect July 1.

Uresti said he would like to see a flexible system in place when it
comes to finding placements for this hardest-to-serve abused-child
population. He would like to see CPS bend the rules to allow providers a
sort of 48-hour emergency leeway when taking on this tougher population.

"We have to strike a balance," he said.

The hardest-to-place
Each month, about 20 percent of those children sleeping in offices were
newly discharged from psychiatric hospitals.

Providers such as Lutheran Social Services or DePelchin Children's
Center are licensed to place abused children into foster homes or
residential treatment facilities, which are more secure than a regular
foster home but less restrictive than a psychiatric facility.

In Texas, there are 4,085 residential treatment beds in 91 centers. Most
centers are either at or near capacity, so operators have to weigh
carefully who among this hard-to-place population could get the most out
of these premium beds.

''We base it (placements) on whether we can help this child," said
Curtis Mooney, DePelchin's president and chief executive.

A child discharged from a psychiatric hospital can cost providers more
than $300 a day for one-on-one supervision in an RTC, Mooney said.
Depending on the child and the extent of its problems, sometimes the
state will pay less than half that.

''You can't run a quality program on $120 a day," Mooney said. ''If all
I had to care for these children were the resources the state was
paying, I could not provide the program these children need."

Lawmakers and state officials are hoping a new reimbursement rate passed
this session — $374 a day for 60 days for children exiting psychiatric
hospitals — will ease the office sleeping problem. That increase, as
well as a small overall rate increase for all foster children, goes into
effect Sept. 1.

Until then, Texas Department of Family and Protective Services
Commissioner Carey Cockerell is holding daily meetings to make sure CPS
staffers have the resources to meet the needs of children in offices and
hotels. State officials are meeting with residential providers to
discuss ways to increase foster care capacity. Another agency panel is
exploring whether these children could be placed in housing run by other
social services agencies.

A foster care package approved this legislative session adds more than
300 CPS caseworkers and tightens requirements for foster placements. It
also allows state employees who have passed criminal background checks
to provide emergency care if an appropriate placement cannot be found.

''We recognize that this is a serious issue, and we are aggressively
exploring solutions," Crimmins said.

Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.

BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...

In response to your other post, Greg...on the threatening teens: Kids sleep in CPS offices after foster-care rejection: Having 148 children sleep in Child Protective Service offices is unacceptable," said House Human Services Chairman Pa

....a lovely little rebuttal to Gregs vicious hate filled invictive
against Betty and against overwhelmed CPS workers.....
Kids sleep in CPS offices after foster-care rejection
By TERRI LANGFORD and JANET ELLIOTT
Copyright 2007 Houston Chroniclehttp://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...o/4857258.html
Private foster care providers have refused to take in at least 372
abused or neglected children so far this year, forcing most to sleep in
Texas Child Protective Services offices for a night or more, the Houston
Chronicle has learned.

Now why would private foster care providers, Greg, who YOU have argued
in the past are in it for the money, turn down children to up their
income? Eh?

LIABILITY and RISK. They affect profitability tremendously!

If you profited from providing security guard services
would you accept every mobster as a client?

Turning them away is a BUSINESS DECISION also!
Last month, the number of children who had to sleep in offices because
an appropriate foster care bed could not be found totaled 148, a sharp
rise from 32 youths in January.

"Youths?" Hmmmm...getting a hint yet, Greg?
State officials said earlier this year that most of the office-bunking
children had severe emotional or medical problems, making them the
toughest to place in an already crowded 34,000-bed foster care network.
In the past five years, the number of foster children increased 43
percent while the number of foster care beds grew by 28 percent.

Oh, severe emotional problems.

To my knowledge CPS workers are not trained, nor provided a system
within which to deal with such children. I was trained in that field
of child treament for emotionally disturbed teens, and it is a very
specialized skill.
But in May, CPS acknowledged that another factor was involved: Private
organizations that care for 80 percent of Texas' foster care children
can refuse to provide a bed for a child for any reason.

Yet another support of my claim, made for years now, in ascps, that
privitizing foster care was and is a sham.
"In every case of a child spending the night in an office, a provider
with space for that child has refused the placement," said Patrick
Crimmins, spokesman for CPS' parent agency, the Texas Department of
Family and Protective Services.

The problem, Greg, as I saw developing as early as 1980, just a few
years after my service on a county social services advisory
commission, was exactly this.

The abuse of children had been taking on a much more serious and
perverse element. Leaving children so warped and damaged that
themselves were becoming a threat to those around them.

One of the first casefiles I reviewed as a student worker on practicum
in 80, included the related incident of a three year old little foster
girl being found standing over the bed of her sleeping foster parents,
holding a knife ... a large kitchen knife, she had gotten from their
kitchen, telling them she was going to kill them.

I was sure there had to be a typo. No, it was a three year old.

And as I read on in the case and found what her own parents had done
to her it because apparent how she developed this extreme survival
behavior.

And this was consistenly what I found with children in treatment that
had come from homes where the state had had to take custody. The
children developed severe sociopathy, as krp puts it, NOT from being
unspanked, but from being 'spanked' in so many perverse ways.

Including neglect so bizzare as to be worthy of TV movie specials.
That right-of-refusal provision is at the center of a struggle between
DFPS and providers that has pushed an overtaxed system past its limits
and exposed how providers have the final say as to whom they will care for.

Actually this is true even with states that do NOT use private
providers. But in fact run their own programs.

Why?

Because foster parents are NOT employees.

Society has energetically rejected paid parents as a solution. That is
professional parents. Only in cases with a clinical mental health
problem is that allowed, and those are highly trained and often folks
from the mental health professions that do that kind of "parenting."

I used to do some of the preparatory training of those folks, and they
don't work for the state, but for private agencies.
"The system is maxed," Crimmins said. "The system as designed, depending
on your point of view, either cannot or will not absorb more children."

When I did my student practicum I recall thinking to myself, if
children are being abused in these ways that produce more and more of
these children that become so incapacitated when will the saturation
point be reached? Society simply hasn't enough resources.
Providers such as Lutheran Social Services counter that they're having
to refuse more children to protect their own operations because state
caseworkers sometimes underplay a child's behavior history, resulting in
a child being placed in the wrong setting. Private agencies contend they
need that right of refusal to keep everyone safe.

Both are correct. Many of those children should be in treatment
settings.

If you want to see an "industry" take a look there.

The problem is, unless it IS run like an industry (they are almost
exclusively non-profit by the way) it will fail.
''Some of the referrals are not appropriate," said Charlene Hoobler,
senior vice president of child and family services for Lutheran Social
Services. "We're not in the business of turning away children, but we
need to manage our risk."

In fact those that evaluate incoming children for them, and I've known
a few of those folks, are very good at their job and recommend most
often a closed psyciatric facility placement.

And are there enough beds there? In 1980 the waiting list was about 6
months long.

And where did they place these children while waiting for the
psychiatric bed?

Why with FOSTER PARENTS, of course.
Family and Protective Services officials argue that the agency does its
best to evaluate the child's level of care.
"We honestly describe the characteristics of each child, including any
emotional, behavioral or medical needs, when seeking a placement.
However, describing a child is not the same as experiencing that child
as a caregiver," Crimmins said.

And THAT folks IS the fact. It read on paper, even with explicit
descriptions of behaviors and the clinical DX as well, very different
than having a 200 lb teen throwing broken plate glass at you....my
very first day in a treatment center...and not supposed to interact
with the children, just "observe."

I was, in fact, the one that physically took him down while everyone
concentrated on trying to stay out of his line of fire.

I read his casefile later, after the police took him away to a
psychiatric facility.

The diagnosis, or evaluation, on this child? MMMMmmmmhhhhhmmmm...

YALP

An bio parent abused and neglected child.
Some of these tougher-to-place children, providers say, are so difficult
they could jeopardize the foster care operation's licensing if they hurt
someone or themselves. So providers say they must pay closer attention
to the child's past behavior for both safety and cost reasons.
If a severely disturbed child already has been through a provider's
foster care program once, some providers think there is no point in
accepting the child again.
"Providers we are contacting are not accepting some children with
special needs, even though they are licensed to do so and are already
caring for other children with special needs," Crimmins said.

So what do you think, Greg, and or fx the sock, what would YOU do,
send them home to their parents with a course in Hansen Proper
Spanking Skills?
But providers say their right of refusal is about the only flexibility
they have to prevent foster care children from being placed in a
residential facility or foster home ill-equipped to handle them.
A continuing problem
In a 2004 study on foster care by then-Comptroller Carole Keeton
Strayhorn, she determined the lack of such a no-rejection policy
undercuts the state's ability to manage an effective program. Some
states do have a no-rejection policy.

Any wonder now, with that above, that fx can post so many incidences
of children being injured in foster care?
"Allowing providers to pick and choose among foster children and the
services they deliver undermines the entire foster care system,"
Strayhorn's report found. ''It also puts caseworkers in a bind when
contractors can dictate which children they will serve."

Then they must stop having volunteer contracts with the actual
caregiver and make them employees, with the training and back up that
implies.
Lawmakers who worked to pass a foster care overhaul this session are
alarmed by the rising number of children staying overnight in offices,
no matter what the reason is.
"Having 148 children sleep in offices is unacceptable," said House Human
Services Chairman Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs. But Rose does not
support a blanket no-rejection policy.
"I do think it's important for us to build our capacity, to require
child-placing agencies licensed by the state to accept children on short
notice and in critical situations, and to arm our state employees with
every ability possible to take care of those children during emergency
situations," he said.

Nonsense.

Total nonsense.

The ONLY way to learn to effectively deal with the damaged children
safely for all parties, and especially the children, is not JUST by
training, but by day to day experience with a team approach.

Imagine, if you will. A worker who has all the case responbilities
they do, spending their evening trying to work with mentally ill, and
or criminally inclined children such as the story in Texas (and
elsewhere).

State Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, tried this session to put a
no-rejection policy in place, but it failed to pass.
''We're letting them (providers) dictate the rules, and that's what is
creating this